Merry after-Christmas!

Thank you to all who helped make our Christmas so wonderful this year! We have so much to be thankful for and we are truly blessed. Evan really enjoyed Christmas and is still keeping busy with all of his new toys. Mike and I are keeping busy with ours as well--Mike got me Photoshop Elements for Christmas, and I have been spending all my time figuring it out. There's so much you can do with it, so bear with me as I tweak all my photos and end up with stuff like this:

I can also make my own title and background for the blog, but we'll see how that goes--i'm still figuring this out.

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas, and are looking forward to a happy New Year!

Snow!

Snow! We've finally had our first snow and we couldn't be more pleased about it. We took Evan outside to play, and he was very excited about his boots. The snow...not snow much. (ha ha, pun intended) I don't blame him though, snow is cold, and his mittens kept falling off (why can't someone invent mittens that actually stay on toddlers?) and the snow was almost deeper than he is tall.

He enjoyed helping daddy with the snow shoveling though.

So, our snow play was short-lived, but we enjoyed the snow through the window for the rest of the day anyway. Back to Evan's snow boots though, he loves them. Yesterday, he put them on (all by himself!) and continued to wear them around the house for at least an hour. I think he likes that he can stomp with them. He also can say "boot", so I'm sure that makes them somewhat more interesting.

On Friday, as it was snowing outside, we watched "White Christmas"--my favorite Christmas movie. Evan sat on the couch with me for the majority of the movie and was mesmerized, which is amazing because he usually only has the attention span for a few minutes of TV--even Sesame Street. He even danced around to some of the music. He has good taste in movies, I guess.

I'll leave you with a video. It's not exceptionally exciting but like I said, Evan enjoys boots--even those that are not his own.

Cabelas, eat your heart out.

We had a fantastic weekend. First off we got our tree, and Evan even helped decorate it. We put all of our unbreakable ornaments down towards the bottom, but he apparently thinks that they're there for him to throw, so now theres only ornaments on the top half of our tree. He gets so excited every morning when he comes out into the living room and sees the tree. I like that.
Later, we decorated ornaments to put on our tree, which was pretty fun and they turned out great.

We also went to Bass Pro Shop this weekend which is now officially my favorite store ever. I think I can say that for the whole family. We had a blast. I know there's no Bass Pro in the west , so if you've never been there it's a sportsman's/outdoor store--kind of like Cabelas (assuming you've been there...). I took some entirely terrible pictures, but I'll use them anyway. Evan loved the fish the most--they had a little pond with some fish and a big aquarium with all sorts of big fish--I think he could have watched them all day.

Everywhere you look there was some stuffed animal (taxidermy, not the cute kind) or wilderness display or some craziness, and Evan was constantly pointing things out to me.

You see over in the top right corner of the picture? Theres a whale hanging from the ceiling. Why was there a whale? I have no idea. But it was AWESOME. Oh, and they sell cool stuff, too. minor detail. We even ate lunch there. Crazy. Best part though--Santa was there. And Evan got to have his picture taken with him.

I wonder if Evan will ever look happy in a Santa photo? Here's last years:


Stone-faced. I think he's making the exact same face in both pictures. Wait, whose teeny little baby is that? Evan was never that small.

I'm so proud of him though--at least he's not crying. (unlike these kids--thanks Ellen) So brave.

Another reason why Bass Pro rocks--our santa picture was free. And we only had to wait in line for 15ish minutes. Last year at the mall we had to wait in line for at least an hour listening to the woman in front of us yelling at her kids (remember that Holly?) and then had to pay a ridiculous amount of money for our photo. ($20? I don't remember). Never again. This year we got one picture for free (which is all you need really) and they gave us a code to use online if we want to order more. So, let me know if you want a santa photo.

Now I've gone and gotten myself all excited and lost my train of thought. Oh well. Moral of the story: we had a fantastic weekend.

One last thing: our christmas tree is a balsam fir, which is kind of bushy. Being from Oregon, we're used to a douglas fir, and I can now say from experience that the doug fir is highly superior to all other christmas trees. Ha! take that world. Go Oregon.

One more thing...

One more thing--I just wanted to post this picture of Evan's awesome outfit from yesterday evening. It made my day, he was so stinking cute. And yes, he's wearing his jammies.

A boy and his dog...someday

Poor Cody. He's such a good dog, and over the past year he hasn't really been getting the love and attention that he had grown accustomed to. And if you know Cody at all, you know that he seems to demand an exceptional amount of love and attention. His world was turned quite upside down when Evan arrived--with most of our attention going to Evan--and since then Evan has slowly developed a huge interest in Cody. Mainly, Cody's eyes, ears, paws and tail. And when I say interest, I mean wanting to poke or pull these things. Needless to say, Cody hasn't been too fond of Evan, and aside from being quite protective of Evan in the beginning (or just watchful and wary, I'm not sure) he mostly just tolerates him. By leaving the room when Evan comes near him.

However, it seems that Cody and Evan are beginning to get a long a little bit better.(Cody looks worried, I know, but it's a start!) Evan really likes to throw Cody's toys for him, and even though they don't get thrown very far, sometimes Cody will run after them. Also, Evan has learned how to do "nice touches" (instead of poking) and is getting pretty good at petting him. Sometimes Cody even seems to enjoy it a bit. Evan especially likes to give Cody hugs, which is adorable.

I have a feeling that someday soon, they are going to be inseperable.

I'm off to go cuddle with my dog.

P.S. How cool is Evan in his Jerry's shirt? (it finally fits, Grandpa and Kate!)